The Pirate Bay co-founder asks for clemency

The Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde submitted his plea for clemency this week, asking the Swedish government to release him from his prison sentence. Sunde, together with three co-defendants, was convicted of criminal copyright infringement in 2009 and sentenced to one year in prison as well as a hefty fine. In his clemency plea, which Sunde published on his personal blog Wednesday, he argued that the case was full of irregularities, and that he shouldn’t have been convicted of crimes he didn’t commit.

A key part in his plea is the involvement of Jim Keyzer, the chief police investigator who went on to work for Warner Bros. while the case was still ongoing. Sunde explained how he came to the conclusion that Keyzer was interviewed by Warner Bros. around the same time that he was questioning the defendants. He also repeated bias accusations against the judge and two lay judges.

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Sunde also argued that his conviction was based on false accusations, including the installation of a load balancer at the site’s ISP which supposedly was proof for his participation in the copyright infringement facilitated by The Pirate Bay. The load balancer wasn’t used for the Pirate Bay, Sunde maintained, but instead part of the ISP’s equipment.

Sunde concluded on his blog that the plea would probably not get a positive answer. However, he hasn’t given up completely: Last month, Sunde and one of his co-defendants filed an appeal with the European Court of Human Rights, arguing that their conviction was in violation of EU laws.